Kenji Oja
Kenji Oja " I am Kenji, Lord of the Dragon clan. It's time to make the shadows afraid." - Kenji Oja Story In singleplayer, the plot mainly revolves around Kenji, last heir to the Serpent's Throne. When he returns from exile, Kenji comes across bandits raiding a peasant village. He can choose to either kill the bandits and save the peasants, or, he can side with the bandits and kill the peasants. If he chooses to save the peasants, he will follow the path of the Dragon Clan. If he aids the bandits, he will follow the path of the Serpent Clan. In Kenji's Journey, the player may choose which territories he or she wishes to attack first. Taking specific territories might give benefits, and other Zen Masters may join Kenji. Later on, the player can summon these Zen Masters from the Keep. He cannot be used on Skirmish mode. ''From the Testimony of Keiji Muranaka, Oja household servant'' Understand me - we had no choice but to act as we did. What we saw that night.... Well, it was past midnight, and the Dragon's Tail was already deep in the sky, and the second watch stood drowsing at their posts. I had just finished refilling the lamps. Our lord had not been sleeping well lately, since our break with the Lotus Clan and Lord Zymeth. Tensions were high everywhere. Kenji came to talk with Lord Oja and the guards sent him in. Kenji often came to converse with his father - he never tired of trying to see his side of things, though he never could. Lord Oja's bodyguards heard a kind of gasp, and something that might have been a gust of wind rustling the trees, though the night was still, and as dark and hot as a kiln. Then a kind of wet sound they did not like at all. When we crowded in...under the yellow lamplight we could see his whole body shaking as he stood over his father's body. He held the knife, blood running off it onto his hands. What were we to believe? Kenji had argued with his father so often over the past few months... His father's corpse was mutilated, struck six or seven times, the right arm half-severed. Kenji's hands shook so badly that blood from the knife spattered the wall. For a moment, no one could move. But even in that state of shock, surely the worst moment of his life, Kenji was thinking; he knew instantly what everyone in the room was about to do -- even at 14 he had the instincts of a battlefield commander. The watch head was still shaping the words, "Take him!" when Kenji began to move. One of the guards had taken a few steps into the room. Before he could move, Kenji whipped the katana from the man's sheath. He pivoted on the balls of his feet and made a diagonal cut through the paper and wood wall behind him. Then he was gone into the night. Later we heard he had scaled the outer wall and crawled silently through a mile of tall grass, with men and horses charging through the countryside around him - one horse came within an inch of crushing his hand. He lived for a week with a sympathetic poacher, while Shinja's picked guardsmen fruitlessly hunted in wider and wider circles. Dressed as a peasant he went south on foot through the Lowlands to the seaside, where he bought a fishing boat and sailed south to lands we do not know of. Again, it is not as if we had no reason to suspect him! His quarrels with his father were longstanding and public. Kenji was... we called him Little Dragon. "Little," because he was nearly two years younger than his brother Yukio, the heir to the Serpent Clan leadership. "Dragon" because he knew it and would never accept it -- he would always work twice as hard as anyone else in his efforts to outdo his brother, and when he did we would hear about it for weeks. He loved Yukio though -- when his brother led the search for him, I was glad he was not there to see. When he fought with his father he did so fiercely, but without anger. Many sons, especially younger sons, bear a grudge against their fathers, but not Kenji -- He did not hate his father, but when his father burned a hamlet, or cut off a poacher's hand, Kenji felt it in a way his father never did. He disagreed and never tired of questioning his father about the rights and wrongs of governing, about the other Clans, and the history of the Dragon. When he came back times had not improved. Seven years of border flare-ups and veiled threats between the clans, and the death of Kenji's brother, had done no good for the Serpent clan. Our provinces were festering, breeding famine and plague; bandit gangs were forming, made up of farmers burnt or raided out of their homes. Otomo and Shinja both helped keep order, but we needed a leader. When I saw Kenji I knew him at once. For seven years there had been rumors, of his death or his return, so my hopes were not high. But yes, this was the Little Dragon, or what he had become. There was a calm in him I had never seen before -- he had learned to harness the restless motion in that long frame of his, and focused it. And there was danger in him too -- he had killed men since I saw him last, I felt it. And he had not forgotten his father's death, fleeing his homeland while his father's killer walked free. I knew Otomo would rally to him, maybe Shinja, maybe Garrin. Given our history, he was the only man who could take control of our clan now. And so all depended on what kind of man he turned out to be.